The Elite Africa Project is a global network of scholars working to shift how Africa and its elites are understood.

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INTRODUCTION

Welcome to The Elite Africa Project

Watch a video introduction to the project and database.

Featured Posts

Introducing: The Elite Africa Project Database

Learn more about the Elite Africa Project and our Online Database!

Dafe Oputu

Scholar Spotlight: Jeanne-Marie Jackson - Part 2

Part 2 of our interview with Professor of English Jeanne-Marie Jackson

Elite Africa Roundup - 20 August 2025

Funeral stalemate in Zambia, Jude Dibia on queerness in African lit

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Elite Africa Roundup - 2 August 2025

WAFCON 24, Cairo event honours displaced Sudanese entrepreneurs

Domains of Elite Power

The mechanics of how power—the essential condition of elite status—is meaningfully generated and exercised

Economic

Economic and business elites

Coercive

Military elites and those in security agencies

Ritual

Royalty, nobles, “traditional” rulers

Aesthetic

Art, literature, music- and media-based elites including new online influencers, clothing designers, architects, etc.

Religious

Religious and spiritual leaders, and intellectual/academic elites

Political

State-based or state-focused elites including international techno/bureaucrats

The Elite Africa Project

is a Canadian-based global network of scholars working to challenge predominant understandings of Africa and its elites.

Both in academia and in wider public discourse, African elites have either been ignored or depicted as grasping and self-interested. This framing perpetuates negative depictions of the continent and its peoples and draws on a simplistic understanding of what power is and how it is wielded. Our work aims to counter these perceptions by initiating global conversations about “who leads” in Africa and how they do so.

We seek to disrupt and renew both academic and public discussions of African leadership, refocusing attention on a wider, qualitatively different set of elites from those that have predominated in the past (such as the parasitic “Big Men” of neo-patrimonial politics).

Burna Boy, Nigerian musician, rapper and songwriter; in 2021, his album Twice as Tall won the Best World Music Album at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards, and he enjoyed back to back Grammy award nominations in 2019 and 2020.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigerian economist, fair trade leader, environmental sustainability advocate, human welfare champion, sustainable finance maven and global development expert. Since March 2021, Okonjo-Iweala has been serving as Director-General of the World Trade Organization.

This project focuses on Africa’s elites, defined as those who operate at the highest level across a range of domains, wield significant power, and possess expert knowledge, skills, and personal strengths that are deployed in strategic, creative, and generative ways. While elites are those who possess the most consequential and powerful agenda-setting and decision-making capacity, Africa’s elites have either been sidelined in many of our analyses or rendered monotonal. When we switch frames to consider the continent as embodying and projecting new, generative forms of power, it changes our view of Africa. It may also change how we understand power itself.

We look at six domains of elite power, from the political to the aesthetic, and ask how we might shift how we think about and study Africa, and how this shift would impact our conceptualization of power and its exercise. Our goal is to contribute to popular conversations about Africa and to highlight the achievements of the astonishing new generation of leaders for a broader public audience.

This website will serve as a hub for collaborative activity by scholars, activists, and practitioners working on Elite Africa and house a searchable database of primary and secondary materials on African elites.

Kofi Annan (1938-2018), Ghanaian-born diplomat, trained in economics, international relations and management; was the first UNSG to be elected from within the ranks of the UN staff itself and served in various key roles before becoming Secretary General.

Namwali Serpell, Zambia award-winning novelist and writer; Recognised early on with the Caine prize, her numerous subsequent awards include the Windham–Campbell Literature Prize, one of the world’s richest literary prizes.

Mohammed "Mo" Ibrahim, Sudanese billionaire businessman. He worked for several telecommunications companies, before founding Celtel, which when sold had over 24 million mobile phone subscribers in 14 African countries.

The Elite Africa Project

is a Canadian-based global network of scholars working to challenge predominant understandings of Africa and its elites.

Both in academia and in wider public discourse, African elites have either been ignored or depicted as grasping and self-interested. This framing perpetuates negative depictions of the continent and its peoples and draws on a simplistic understanding of what power is and how it is wielded. Our work aims to counter these perceptions by initiating global conversations about “who leads” in Africa and how they do so.

We seek to disrupt and renew both academic and public discussions of African leadership, refocusing attention on a wider, qualitatively different set of elites from those that have predominated in the past (such as the parasitic “Big Men” of neo-patrimonial politics).

This project focuses on Africa’s elites — those who operate at the highest level across a range of domains, wield significant power, and possess expert knowledge, skills, and personal strengths that are deployed in strategic, creative, and generative ways. When we switch frames to consider the continent as embodying and projecting new, generative forms of power, it changes our view of Africa. It may also change how we understand power itself.

This website is the hub for collaborative activity by scholars, activists, and practitioners working on Elite Africa and will house a searchable database of primary and secondary materials on African elites.

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ELITE AFRICA PROJECT DATABASE

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Lima, Alvaro Luis. “Screw the Nation!: Queer Nationalism and Representations of Power in Contemporary South African Art”. African Arts 45, no 4 (2012): 46‑57. https://doi.org/10.1162/AFAR_a_00027.

“Known for his irreverence, Steven Cohen strikes again. (1) Wearing heels with tentacles that prevent him from walking, he crawls fabulously to the polling station in order to make his voice heard in the second presidential election in post-apartheid South Africa. On all fours, he smiles at the curious voters who stare at his black leotard, extravagant make-up, and feathery wig. "Dress to excess"? (2) Surely, but what exactly is he exceeding? […]what exactly does Cohen’s performance transgress or exceed? It exceeds the standard to which nationals are expected to engage in the political arena; it exceeds by testing the limits of citizenship; and it exceeds national willingness to embrace difference as a unifying strategy. This article elaborates on these excesses as larger symptoms of the end of apartheid in South African art and explores how they revolve around gender and sexual diversity as instruments for reimagining national identity. This complex topic cannot be exhausted here; however, by analyzing works of art which highlight the role of queerness in shaping nationalist discourses, I hope to ignite a discussion on an issue that cannot be ignored: what do we make of the excess of the election-day queen?”

[Source: Excerpt from the article].

Lima, Alvaro Luis. Screw the Nation!

Lima, Alvaro Luis.
This is some text inside of a div block.

"This article elaborates on these excesses as larger symptoms of the end of apartheid in South African art and explores how they revolve around gender and sexual diversity as instruments for reimagining national identity."

Aesthetic
Political

Homann, Lisa, Jean Borgatti, Akinwumi Ogundiran, Silvia Forni, Christopher Slogar, Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, Charlotte Joy, and Kevin MacDonald. Knowledge, Ethics, and Power: Publishing African Objects Without Clear African Provenance. African Arts53, no 4 (2020): 17‑23. https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00548.

"The most interesting part of the repatriation debate in relation to the publication of images of unprovenanced objects is a simultaneous demand for a return to self-determination, for the right to possess and tell the story of your own past. To truly embrace this policy would not only necessitate the return of objects that are central to the identity of nations or cultural groups, but also signal an openness to relinquishing control over who has the right to set future interpretive research agendas.”

[Source: Excerpt from the article, p. 23].

Homann, Lisa, Jean Borgatti, Akinwumi Ogundiran, Silvia Forni, Christopher Slogar, Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, Charlotte Joy, and Kevin MacDonald. Knowledge, Ethics, and Power

Homann, Lisa et al
This is some text inside of a div block.

"The most interesting part of the repatriation debate in relation to the publication of images of unprovenanced objects is a simultaneous demand for a return to self-determination, for the right to possess and tell the story of your own past. To truly embrace this policy would not only necessitate the return of objects that are central to the identity of nations or cultural groups, but also signal an openness to relinquishing control over who has the right to set future interpretive research agendas.”

Aesthetic

Van Beurden, Sarah. “Culture, Artifacts and Independent Africa: The Cultural Politics of Museums and Heritage.” In The Palgrave Handbook of African Colonial and Postcolonial History, edited by Toyin Falola and Martin S. Shanguhyia, 1193-1212. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2018.

This chapter traces how, in the context of Western colonial knowledge cultures and regimes of value, certain objects from African material cultures were reinvented as art, and considers the impact of these changes on the development of museum and heritage cultures in postcolonial Africa, in which museums were seen both as subjects of, and tools for, cultural decolonization. African cultural institutions were confronted with the legacies of colonial regimes of value, but also with the physical legacies of colonial cultural infrastructures, in which large collections of what was now considered national heritage were located in the West. The chapter addresses the rising importance of international heritage and conservation regimes supported by organizations such as UNESCO, and their role in the negotiation of restitution claims.

[Source: abstract sourced from Springer].

Van Beurden, Sarah. Culture, Artifacts and Independent Africa

Van Beurden, Sarah
This is some text inside of a div block.

This chapter traces how, in the context of Western colonial knowledge cultures and regimes of value, certain objects from African material cultures were reinvented as art, and considers the impact of these changes on the development of museum and heritage cultures in postcolonial Africa, in which museums were seen both as subjects of, and tools for, cultural decolonization.

Aesthetic

Blier, Suzanne Preston. “Africa, Art, and History: An Introduction”. In A History of Art in Africa, edited by Monica Blackmum Visonà, Robin Poynor, and Hebert M. Cole,15-19. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003.

A History of Art in Africa is the only comprehensive art historical survey of the African continent to incorporate discussions of contemporary art and artists. It is both a reliable resource for art historians and an accessible introduction to the vibrant arts of Africa.

[Source: abstract obtained from Amazon]. 

Blier, Suzanne Preston. “Africa, Art, and History: An Introduction”

Blier, Suzanne Preston
This is some text inside of a div block.

A History of Art in Africa is the only comprehensive art historical survey of the African continent to incorporate discussions of contemporary art and artists.

Aesthetic

Willett, Frank. African Art. New ed. London: Thames & Hudson, 2002.

The art of the Fang, the BaTeke, the BaKota, and other African people sis extraordinarily vigorous and shows a brilliant sense of form. The substantial aesthetic impact that their works have had on the development of twentieth-century Western art - on Picasso, Derain, Braque, and Modigliani, among others - continues to this day. This classic study reveals the astonishing variety and expressive power of the art of a continent that contains more distinct peoples and cultures than any other. The revised edition has been updated throughout, incorporating recent research and additional illustrations, plus a new chapter and extended bibliography. It remains an invaluable resource for students and for anyone interested in African art.

[Source: Readerly].

Willett, Frank. African Art.

Willett, Frank
This is some text inside of a div block.

This classic study reveals the astonishing variety and expressive power of the art of a continent that contains more distinct peoples and cultures than any other.

Aesthetic

Visonà, Monica Blackmun. A History of Art in Africa. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Prentice Hall, 2003.

A ground-breaking work, this is the first book to cover the arts of the entire continent of Africa, including Egypt, and to survey the art history, rather than the cultural traditions, of African peoples. The authors’ unique synthesis of up-to-date research on African arts of many periods and geographic areas has resulted in a major contribution to the literature of art history. Thousands of years of African art, from prehistory to the present, are considered, encompassing sculpture, painting, architecture, textiles, ceramics, and the myriad art forms of personal adornment and performance. Individual authors contribute chapters on their areas of expertise, yet the whole volume works as a seamless text, weaving together everything from prehistoric Saharan rock art to contemporary sculpture, including the rich, multi-faceted art of the African diaspora. Brilliantly illustrated throughout, and including full indexes and bibliography, this volume is a milestone in the study and future perception of African art.

[Source: Goodreads].

Visonà, Monica Blackmun. A History of Art in Africa

Visonà, Monica Blackmun
This is some text inside of a div block.

This is the first book to cover the arts of the entire continent of Africa, including Egypt, and to survey the art history, rather than the cultural traditions, of African peoples.

Aesthetic
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